FUTURE GROUND ZERO, Caracas, Wednesday (UNN) -- Venezuela President Hugo Chávez, re-elected for a third term last month, announced at his swearing in on Wednesday that he would nationalise key businesses, declared himself a Trotskyist and cited the ideas of Marx and Lenin. As he took the oath, Mr Chávez said he would give up his "entire life to the construction of Venezuelan socialism."

Commentators have estimated said life as "probably about eleven months, tops" and placed Chávez at the top of every 2007 "dead pool" list in the Western world. The White House called him "a despotic demagogue desperately destabilising the domain. He's just forcing us to come in and make it unstable. What the hell does he think he's doing, calling our Lord Jesus Christ 'the greatest socialist in history'? You think George is gonna stand for that for a second?"

Chávez is attacking the problem of social distribution of wealth by destroying as much of it as possible. Venezuela's financial markets tumbled after Chávez promised to nationalise the biggest phone and power companies. The Caracas Stock Exchange closed nearly 19% down, Electricidad de Caracas fell 20% and CA Nacional Telefonos was suspended from trading after closing 30% lower. The currency, the Venezuelan Bolivar, has been replaced in day-to-day use with twigs and small rocks, as these suddenly have much greater practical exchange value.

Wall Street heavyweight Merrill Lynch said the situation was very serious. "If any US companies are affected, we would expect the US military to ensure they are promptly and fairly compensated," said John Negroponte, of the State Department division of the US White House, Inc.

Chávez wants to merge all his coalition partners into a single party, remove the opposition TV channel's broadcast licence, nationalise key businesses, rule by decree for a year and have a constitutional amendment passed allowing him to run for President indefinitely. He has stated, however, that the construction of a fifty-metre gold statue of himself in the city square of Caracas that turns to follow the sun will be delayed until the start of his next term, and renaming the days of the week and the months of the year after himself and his mother can wait until the start of the one after that.

After the ceremony Chávez flew to Nicaragua for the inauguration of President-elect Daniel Ortega, then went for tea with his good friend Fidel Castro where they both dropped their trousers and mooned in the general direction of Washington D.C.

Castro expressed his confidence that Chávez was in no real danger from the US. "This is the CIA we're talking about," said Castro. "They could fuck up a wet dream. Hey, maybe they'll try the exploding cigar trick again. That's a good one."